Cold case closed with murderer receiving life sentences

The remaining family of Gwendolyn Evelyn Nelson sat wiping away tears Friday while sitting in Craven County Superior Court as 36 years of unresolved anguish came to a close.

Cathryn Lindsay, Sun Journal Staff

The remaining family of Gwendolyn Evelyn Nelson sat wiping away tears Friday while sitting in Craven County Superior Court as 36 years of unresolved anguish came to a close.

Andrew Bernard Adams, a convicted multiple rapist and murderer, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and second-degree rape and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the 1977 murder and rape of Nelson. Adams was ineligible for the death penalty under North Carolina law, as he has an IQ under 70, according to a news release from the District Attorney’s Office. He received the maximum sentence for his crimes.

Adams sat expressionless throughout the reading of facts, the sentencing and the family’s impact statement.

“Today I have tears of joy in my eyes,” said Kindell Mitchell, Nelson’s daughter. “It has been a tough 36 years. I never found out what had happened to my mother until I was older, and I was truly terrified to even go to school.

“(They) all can rest now that justice is being served,” Mitchell said of her family members who died before the murder was solved. “They are all looking down smiling. I thank God for the person who reopened and followed the case.”

“Today was like actually burying my sister,” said Kametrice Nelson, Gwendolyn Nelson’s sister, who was 3 years old at the time of her murder. “My mother grieved constantly. She would sit in her house and just cry. I always knew why.

“He is heartless … like an animal in the wild, he is not a human being,” she said of Adams.

“I would like to commend Sgt. Chip Dombrowsky for identifying Adams as a suspect and developing enough evidence to procure these guilty pleas,” said District Attorney Scott Thomas. “Sergeant Dombrowsky spent many hours of his own personal time investigating the case to being Adams to justice.”

New Bern’s oldest cold case

June 28, 1977 — An unidentified woman hysterically calls police; she has found a body of a young woman behind the cafeteria of F.R. Danyus School, on West Street in New Bern. Police respond to the call and find the body lying face up under a tree. She was nude, her shirt draped across her stomach. She was beaten so severely in her head it was pushed partially into the ground.

Her mother identifies her, Gwendolyn Evelyn Nelson, 18, of New Bern, the young mother of a 4-year-old-daughter.

Nelson had been beaten around the head and cut by a sharp object, according to her 1977 autopsy.

“We don’t have much, but we are going with what we have,” said Maj. Amos Conner, a New Bern police officer at the time.

Suspects are interviewed by the police, leads are followed, but the murder goes unsolved.

Nearly 30 years later, Nelson’s case is re-opened. Investigators start from the beginning and re-interview witnesses and persons of interest. They have a bit of DNA from the crime, and the technology is now available to compare samples; however, the DNA clears the original suspect and the case is once again put back on the shelf.

In 2006, New Bern Police Investigator, Sgt. H.E. “Chip” Dombrowsky, in conjunction with the N.C. State Bureau of investigation, re-opens Nelson’s murder case.

Using a fresh set of eyes, he starts from scratch, reconstructing the case. It took him nearly a year, he explained. He examined other crimes in the area and began to develop a pattern, by looking at the geography, motives and how the crimes were linked.

“Cold cases are assigned in addition to normal police duties, so it’s a few hours here and there,” Dombrowsky said. “There were a lot of late nights.”

He begins to develop a profile, and hones in on a suspect — Andrew Bernard Adams, a felon who was living in the area during that time.

Adams was convicted of assault with the intent to commit rape on Sept. 21, 1973, which he committed at the age of 16, in New Hanover County, according to his incarceration record. He was released from prison and spent time in New Bern, where multiple rapes were reported in a small area during that time, including Nelson’s, according to Dombrowsky. Several people were arrested for those crimes, but they have since been cleared.

On July 13, 1979, Adams was convicted of three counts of assault with the intent to commit rape and one count of rape in the first degree in Wilmington. He confessed to rapes in Wilmington and New Bern, according to Dombrowsky. He served 33 years in prison, having additional time added to his sentence after he cut a fellow inmate’s face with a razor blade in 1999. He was released in January 2007.

“I try to do everything I can to exonerate someone as a suspect,” Dombrowsky said. “But everything I did, I couldn’t eliminate him — it all kept leading back to him.”

After consulting with experts in behavioral analysis, Dombrowsky first interviews Adams in September 2009. He collects Adams’ DNA in October 2010 and compares it to the 1977 case, but it’s not a perfect match.

“The DNA sample had degraded over time,” Dombrowsky said. “The markers weren’t enough to submit the match into (the Combined DNA Index System). It was a match but it wasn’t the perfect match that you hear about on TV; that one in a billion match that would’ve assured a conviction.”

It is clear that Adams needs to confess to the crime, so Dombrowsky uses his training from the behavior analysts he has consulted to be able to know Adams, to learn when he is lying and to make him comfortable around the investigator.

Working with Detective Robert Odham, a violent crimes investigator in Wilmington, Dombrowsky interviews Adams several times and executes a search warrant on his home.

“The investigation accelerated in 2010, we knew we needed to get him,” Dombrowsky said. The officers keep a close tabs on Adams.

In early January of 2012, Wilmington police officers make a grisly discovery at 1115 Cowan St. in Wilmington — the bludgeoned body of 24-year-old Latricia Ana Scott, a mother of two, buried in a shallow grave.

With New Bern and Wilmington police already honing in on Adams, he is immediately a suspect. He lives near Scott and has been seen around the young women. Wilmington detectives find a cooler with blood-stained men’s clothing and pillowcase near Adams’ home, according to the affidavit seeking a search warrant. They then find sheets with blood stains at Adams’ home.

On Jan. 13, 2012, the U.S. Marshal Violent Fugitive Task Force attempted to serve a warrant to Adams when he barricaded himself inside a house at 815 N. 6th St., in Wilmington. The stand-off lasted several hours before Adams was arrested.

That night, Dombrowsky traveled to Wilmington to interview Adams. Adams admitted to grabbing Nelson by the neck, dragging her behind the school and assaulting her. He tells Dombrowsky, she fought back and he hit her with his fist three times. He further told the investigator, she was not moving when he left her.

According to a news release from the District Attorney’s Office, when detectives asked Adams, “Why he would attack her, when he knew her family and knew that she was tough and a fighter?” Adams replied simply, “Opportunity.”

“(Adams) is truly evil, a violent, dangerous criminal,” said District Attorney Scott Thomas. “He will spend the rest of his natural life in prison.”

Cathryn Lindsay can be reached at 252-635-5671 or cathryn.lindsay@newbernsj.com.

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